By documenting Ben Carson?s actions, a coalition of housing advocates hopes to keep the administration accountable Like many housing advocates, Guillermo Mayer, president and CEO of the San Francisco nonprofit and legal advocacy group Public Advocates, wasn?t happy with the nomination of neurosurgeon and former presidential candidate Ben Carson to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In fact, the unexpected choice for HUD?s leader was part of a wave of cabinet nominations he felt set a disquieting precedent.
?Many are wholly unprepared to spearhead the agencies they?ve been chosen to lead, or have views in opposition to those agencies,? he says. ?Ben Carson is a perfect example.?
In response, Mayer and his colleagues decided vigilance was the answer. CarsonWatch, a collaboration between Public Advocates, the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, the Lawyers? Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and PolicyLink, seeks to keep an eye on Carson and the administration, tracking his moves in person and online, to make sure vital housing and civil rights issues aren?t ignored. ?This is the time for somebody to be leading HUD who understands the agency and can advocate for its beneficiaries,? he says. ?More than five million families are directly impacted by HUD. To have someone in charge who, from what we observed, didn?t realize the proposed Trump budget was going to cut the budget of the programs that he was promoting on his listening tour, is tr...